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gerisullivanThere are seaweed-eating sheep in the world. Who knew?
Not me, until Edie told me while we sat at the kitchen table, noshing on sushi and unwinding with a glass of dark cherry wine in the wee hours that marked Joe & Edie's safe return home. Turns out the native sheep on North Ronaldsay survive on the stuff. A bit of online research this morning suggests why: according to the North Ronaldsay page on the Orkney Islands website, the sheep are kept on the seashore by a continuous 5ft-6ft high drystone dyke. There's a nursery rhyme or mnemonic in there: "The sheep on the seashore eat seaweed, da-da, da-da-da, da-da, da..."
The question of course is what kind of yarn do you get from seaweed-eating sheep? How does it knit? Edie and Priscilla are going to find out; they each picked up a fair bit of it. Here's an online look-see; scroll down to the North Ronaldsay yarn. Then check out the castlemilk moorit at the bottom of the page. What a great name: "castlemilk moorit"!
Then there's the Weird Sheep website. It has this to say about the seaweed-eating sheep:
"On the fertile Orkney island of North Ronaldsay the crofters specialised in growing crops. They built a wall all round the island and put the sheep on the beach, away from the crops. Here the sheep were forced to adopt to a diet of seaweed or kelp. The result is a unique, small, horned breed, which produces meat and a small amount of wool. The fleece has a fine undercoat and a coarse, hairy overcoat and comes in all colours."
But is all sweetness and seaweed in North Ronaldsay? Or is arsenic turning up in unexpected places, such as sheep urine? Turns out that thanks to their unusual diet, the North Ronaldsay sheep are champions when it comes to ingesting arsenic.
Other late-night stories included unwrapping and looking at the Eddie Jones, Atom, and Clark Ashton Smith art that followed Joe & Edie home from the Worldcon. Wow. Stories from the convention, stories from London, and more stories from the Orkneys. Intermixed with houses updates and warning Joe that his email is probably full of messages about the FANAC domain registration expiring. I'm afraid I didn't torture him nearly enough before reassuring him that Jack Weaver renewed the registration and that the site is now back up and running.
By the time we all toddled upstairs, I was wearing a delicate, felted-wool scarf. It's one of the world's perfect gifts for travelers to bring to a friend back home: absolutely gorgeous, unlike anything I've seen before, weighing something like an ounce, and packing into no space at all.
Four and a half hours later, the conditioning of the last 25 days kicked in. Even though the bedroom door was closed, so Basker couldn't wake me herself, I awoke to let her out and make up her meal of the day. Edie woke up an hour later, and the morning laptops-at-the-breakfast-table, with the give and take of conversation and settling back into home routines, has filled the hours since. It's a fine, fine morning indeed.
Not me, until Edie told me while we sat at the kitchen table, noshing on sushi and unwinding with a glass of dark cherry wine in the wee hours that marked Joe & Edie's safe return home. Turns out the native sheep on North Ronaldsay survive on the stuff. A bit of online research this morning suggests why: according to the North Ronaldsay page on the Orkney Islands website, the sheep are kept on the seashore by a continuous 5ft-6ft high drystone dyke. There's a nursery rhyme or mnemonic in there: "The sheep on the seashore eat seaweed, da-da, da-da-da, da-da, da..."
The question of course is what kind of yarn do you get from seaweed-eating sheep? How does it knit? Edie and Priscilla are going to find out; they each picked up a fair bit of it. Here's an online look-see; scroll down to the North Ronaldsay yarn. Then check out the castlemilk moorit at the bottom of the page. What a great name: "castlemilk moorit"!
Then there's the Weird Sheep website. It has this to say about the seaweed-eating sheep:
"On the fertile Orkney island of North Ronaldsay the crofters specialised in growing crops. They built a wall all round the island and put the sheep on the beach, away from the crops. Here the sheep were forced to adopt to a diet of seaweed or kelp. The result is a unique, small, horned breed, which produces meat and a small amount of wool. The fleece has a fine undercoat and a coarse, hairy overcoat and comes in all colours."
But is all sweetness and seaweed in North Ronaldsay? Or is arsenic turning up in unexpected places, such as sheep urine? Turns out that thanks to their unusual diet, the North Ronaldsay sheep are champions when it comes to ingesting arsenic.
Other late-night stories included unwrapping and looking at the Eddie Jones, Atom, and Clark Ashton Smith art that followed Joe & Edie home from the Worldcon. Wow. Stories from the convention, stories from London, and more stories from the Orkneys. Intermixed with houses updates and warning Joe that his email is probably full of messages about the FANAC domain registration expiring. I'm afraid I didn't torture him nearly enough before reassuring him that Jack Weaver renewed the registration and that the site is now back up and running.
By the time we all toddled upstairs, I was wearing a delicate, felted-wool scarf. It's one of the world's perfect gifts for travelers to bring to a friend back home: absolutely gorgeous, unlike anything I've seen before, weighing something like an ounce, and packing into no space at all.
Four and a half hours later, the conditioning of the last 25 days kicked in. Even though the bedroom door was closed, so Basker couldn't wake me herself, I awoke to let her out and make up her meal of the day. Edie woke up an hour later, and the morning laptops-at-the-breakfast-table, with the give and take of conversation and settling back into home routines, has filled the hours since. It's a fine, fine morning indeed.
